There’s talk of fortunes to be made, of stocks to climb like Jacob’s ladder. I’ve looked at the names they whisper – the ones they say will carry us to this new Eden – and I’ve tried to see past the shine, to the hard ground beneath. Here’s what I’ve found, not a promise of riches, but a reckoning of risks.
For much of this month, bitcoin has been strutting around at the mid-$60,000s-a scene so humdrum one could hear crickets chirping in the background.
So, here are two. Two companies people are getting excited about. Data centers and… Reddit. Honestly. I’ve seen it all now.
Since the late Q4 uprising, Bitcoin has been a prisoner in its own domain, confined between $85k and $90k, a gilded cage where even fleeting victories are snatched away. A brief dash past $97k, a mirage of hope, was swiftly extinguished by the cold hand of reality, leaving only the echo of dashed dreams.
Oklo, you see, is currently engaged in the noble pursuit of constructing advanced fission reactors – rather ingenious contraptions called Aurora powerhouses, no less. These are intended to supply the ever-increasing energy demands of data centres and various industrial enterprises. A perfectly sensible idea, naturally.
The question, naturally, is whether this presents an opportunity. A chance to acquire a piece of the future before the masses once again succumb to speculative fervor? In short, yes. Now is precisely the moment to add Nvidia shares to one’s portfolio. Not, mind you, because of any inherent faith in technological progress – though that is a pleasant side effect – but because a clever investor always buys when others are counting their losses.
Now, Borr Drilling, for the uninitiated, is in the business of sticking pointy things into the seabed.1 Specifically, jack-up rigs – those sturdy platforms that raise themselves on legs to avoid getting their keels scraped. They’re the workhorses of shallow-water oil and gas extraction. A decidedly unglamorous profession, but one that, rather surprisingly, is currently enjoying a renaissance. Years of… shall we say, fiscal prudence (read: underinvestment) have left a gap in the market, and Borr is positioning itself to fill it.
By the close of trading, Tandem’s stock was up over 32%. Which, in the grand scheme of things, is a decent showing. It’s enough to make one briefly consider a career in glucose monitoring, before remembering the inherent complexities of endocrinology.
Tuya, as near as I can tell, is the plumbing of the smart home. They don’t make the shiny objects; they make the stuff that lets the shiny objects talk to each other. It’s like being the stage crew at a really elaborate, slightly terrifying puppet show. They have this AI cloud platform that lets companies build connected devices without, you know, actually building the entire software infrastructure. It’s efficient, and it’s remarkably unglamorous. Which, again, is a plus.
Based in Portland, Oregon – a place known for its coffee and, increasingly, its attempts to solve the world’s energy problems – NuScale currently holds the singular honour (and, let’s be frank, the considerable pressure) of being the only U.S. nuclear firm with approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for these Small Modular Reactors, or SMRs. There’s a whole host of other startups – Oklo, Nano Nuclear Energy, and a few others operating on what can only be described as optimistic projections – but NuScale is the only one with a license to actually deploy the things on a commercial scale. It’s a bit like being the only blacksmith in a town that’s suddenly decided everyone needs swords. Good for business, potentially. But also a lot of responsibility.